Anyone for a Peaceful Consensus?

By William R. Doerner.

Other foreign policy issues demand Reagan's attention

Ronald Reagan's summer vacation in Santa Barbara was interrupted not only by the new crisis in U.S.-Soviet relations. Other urgent turns in overseas affairs were demanding the Administration's attention. Last week the nation suffered its first combat fatalities among the 1,370 U.S. Marines assigned to peacekeeping duties in Lebanon: two Marines were killed, hit by mortar fire.

Shocked and saddened, President Reagan ordered American forces beefed up in the area with an additional 2,000 seaborne Marines to be stationed in the waters off Beirut. The Reagan Administration could only watch, however, when its ally Israel suffered a different kind of shock: the announcement by Prime Minister Menachem Begin that he would resign.

Central American policy issues also made demands on the Administration. Significantly, a U.S. official met with the political leadership of El Salvador's leftist rebels last week. In Washington, the bipartisan commission charged with recommending long-range U.S. policy concerning the often neglected nations of Central America began its deliberations, taking testimony from two former Presidents and four retired Secretaries of State. And in the background loomed the U.S.-Soviet talks about Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF), due to pick up again in Geneva this week, and Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), scheduled to resume next month. For a President who has so far devoted the bulk of his energies to domestic affairs, it added up to a full foreign agenda indeed.

The Marine tragedy, which included 14 injured as well as the dead, occurred just three days short of the first anniversary of the much heralded Reagan plan for peace in the Middle East. As part of that initiative, Reagan proposed a temporary U.S. military presence in Lebanon, along with contingents from other Western countries, until Lebanon's government managed to establish its authority throughout the ravaged land. That goal is proving more difficult to attain than the Administration had foreseen, as religious factions renew their ancient feuds with growing ferocity.

When news of the casualties came in, Vice President George Bush flew to Washington from his summer home in Maine and convened a meeting of the "special situation group"--the first of three held on the Lebanon crisis. The group reached general agreement that the U.S. Marine contingent would remain in place, at least for the time being, a view that was quickly approved by Reagan in California. Though realistic about its chances, Washington instructed Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, Robert McFarlane, to pressure President Amin Gemayel to continue trying to gather Lebanon's factions into a government of national reconciliation.

Reagan notified Congress, as he is required to do by the 1973 War Powers Resolution, that U.S. Marines in Lebanon had been involved in "sporadic fighting." However, he avoided calling the episodes of mortar fire in which the two Marines were killed "hostilities," since that could set off a chain of events that he wants to avoid. Under the resolution, which was enacted over President Richard Nixon's veto, the deployment of U.S. forces into "hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated," requires congressional approval within a period of 90 days. Although the constitutionality of that requirement remains in question, the Reagan Administration seeks to skirt any showdown by insisting to Congress that the Marines are merely stationed in a foreign nation "while equipped for combat," a form of deployment that does not require congressional assent. Explained Secretary of State George Shultz: "I believe there is no concerted effort to single out the Marines and target them."

That seemed too hairsplitting a point for some Congressmen, however, who insisted that Congress must have a voice in deciding whether to keep U.S. troops in the midst of a Lebanese civil war, even as part of a multilateral peace-keeping effort. If the U.S. casualty list in Lebanon should grow, Congress's effort to assert its war-powers authority will doubtless gain momentum.

On the Central American issue last week, the Administration's weight and commitment seemed to move faster toward a negotiating mode. U.S. Special Envoy Richard Stone, frustrated in a July attempt to meet with representatives of the El Salvador guerrillas who have waged war on that country's American-backed government for almost four years, finally sat down with four of them. They met in the dining room of a white stucco mansion in Costa Rica with the nation's President, Luis Alberto Monge, as host. Such a meeting has long been advocated by critics of the Reagan Administration's growing military involvement in Central America as the first step toward a negotiated settlement.

The rebels were represented by Guillermo Ungo and Ruben Zamora of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (F.D.R.), Mario Aguinada of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) and Mario Lopez of the Central American Workers Revolutionary Party (P.R.T.C.). Working under a joint banner, they claim to seek a share of power in the

San Salvador government of President Alvaro Magana--a goal the U.S. has consistently opposed as tantamount to 'shooting their way into power," as Shultz once put it. If the opening round last week is any indication, the dialogue promises to be a lengthy one: according to a U.S. participant, the two sides did more talking at, rather than with, each other.

In Bogota, another meeting aimed at opening up discussions took place. Arranged by Colombian President Belisario Betancur, it was the first get-together between elements of the Magan government, represented by two members of the Salvadoran Peace Commission, and Salvadoran guerrilla leaders. As with the Stone-F.D.R./F.M.L.N. session, what was significant about the Bogoty meeting was not that nothing was quickly accomplished but that it took place at all.

U.S. policy in the region was on the table at the U.S. State Department, where the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, whose chairman is former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, learned from its first witnesses that the job of finding bipartisan consensus will hardly be easy. It was soon clear that the split on U.S. objectives in Central America starts at the very top of the foreign policy Establishment: among the former Presidents and Secretaries of State who used to execute it. The opposing positions on what is at stake in that region were neatly bracketed by Cyrus Vance, who judged the region's difficulties "essentially local in nature," and Alexander Haig, who insisted that "our problem in Central America is first and foremost global." Then, as if splitting that Vance-Haig difference, former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter both urged the commission to take a balanced approach, looking at the area's economic and social needs as well as its strategic significance.

Carter even gave a qualified endorsement to the Reagan Administration's recent decision to stage large-scale military maneuvers in Central America. Ford urged the U.S. to avoid a stop-go approach to policy in the region. Said the former President: "I would propose that we not look at it on a year-to-year basis but on at least a five-year basis." In comments to reporters afterward, Kissinger said, "If there was unanimity on any point, it was that we emerge out of these discussions with a consensus: that we can't really afford to be divided on an issue that is important to the future of our country."

That is surely so. But when Congress returns from vacation Sept. 12, the Administration is not likely to find a great deal of consensus on many issues, including such questions as future covert aid to the Nicaraguan contras and funds for the MX missile. While Congress is always nervous about defying any President on national security issues, the Reagan Administration may find itself faced with some of the sharpest debates over foreign policy in recent years.

--By William R. Doerner. Reported by Douglas Brew with Reagan, with other bureaus

With reporting by Douglas Brew, Reagan This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.